“When truth is stranger than fiction.”

Talk about truth being stranger than fiction! In 1898, during the Klondike Rush, a young man was killed in Dawson. (People did not die of old age then and there.) The Monty on duty found some letters in the kid’s pocket and informed his parents their son was dead. A year later, a cast iron coffin showed up in Dawson for the kid’s remains. Well, by then everyone who had been in Dawson the previous year was gone and there was no way to identify the kid’s bones. No one wanted to disappoint the parents, so they found some old bones, put them in the coffin and sent it back to some city on the East Coast. At that time, everything coming into Dawson had to be carried on someone’s back. The coffin had to be carried by men UP the Chilkoot Pass and, then, filled with bones, it had to be carried DOWN the Chilkoot Pass. A few months later, the coffin came back. The family had a doctor examine the bones and found them to be those of an Indian. So back the coffin came, crossing the United States for the third time, then up to Skagway for the second time, and up over the Chilkoot Pass on foot for the second time. The family’s instruction were to bury the bones and not send the coffin back. The bones were dumped into the graveyard and the coffin was auctioned off – and after changing hands a number of times, became Alaska’s first bathtub. [See my books at https://authormasterminds.com/master-of-the-impossible-crime.]